Generally, an electronic exchange provides a matching process between traders, or simply buyers and sellers. Some well known exchanges include Eurex, LIFFE, Euronext, CME, CBOT, Xetra, and Island. Traders are typically connected to an electronic exchange by way of a communication link to facilitate electronic messaging between the trader and the exchange. For instance, the trader might submit buy or sell orders to an electronic exchange and later obtain price order fills from the exchange. Ease of submitting buy or sell orders has made electronic exchanges a successful venue for trading. Accordingly, an increasing number of people across the world are actively participating in a market at any given time. The increase in the number of potential market participants has advantageously led to, among other things, a more competitive market and greater liquidity than with traditional methods of trading such as open outcry.
To keep it fair and for other reasons too numerous to mention here, guidelines or rules are often placed that a trader must follow to participate over one or more electronic exchanges. The rules may come from the exchange itself, or the guidelines may be mandated by law in the U.S. or any other country or trading facility that allows or implements electronic trading. However, some rules apply in one country and not another, some rules apply to one exchange and not another, therefore it is often left up to the active participants to follow and obey the rules or else they may be penalized. One such rule that is required by some exchanges and/or countries is that crossing orders by the same trader or trading entity is not allowed. As used herein, crossing orders refers to a trader or trading entity affecting both the purchase and sale of a tradable object at the same price level. For example, a trader is crossing if he or she has simultaneous buy and sell orders for the same tradable object at the same price level. A trading entity may be an individual trader, group of traders, and so forth.
However, some types of trading strategies may unintentionally (or intentionally) cross orders. For example, if a trader has a working buy order at a price of 10, and later inadvertently enters a new order to sell at a price of 10, the two orders would cross and violate the above rule. According to another example, a trader may enter an order to sweep the market. That is, the trader may submit an order that “sweeps” up the entire bid or ask quantity available (or a large portion thereof) over one or more price levels. Usually the price levels are chosen so that the order will fill immediately. Because of their very nature, an order that sweeps the market may increase the likelihood of crossing orders.
According to one particular software routine, to prevent orders from crossing, when a new order is submitted any relevant working orders that are opposite to the new order are deleted. Then, simultaneously, or near simultaneously, the new order is submitted to the exchange. Although this solution may prevent orders from crossing, the new order often requires more quantity than is currently available because the current state of the market was not accurately accounted for. Therefore, any remaining portion of the new order will remain in the market as a working order. This is not always preferred.
Thus, there is a need for characterizing the current state of the market and adjusting order parameters, if necessary, based on the state before submitting an order to market to prevent orders from crossing.